Grandfather left to rot in cooler for days after heart attack on cruise ship, lawsuit alleges

Marilyn Jones and family seeking $1m over treatment of husband Robert’s body after death on Celebrity Equinox

FILE - The cruiser Celebrity Equinox built by the shipyard Meyer in Papenburg, Germany, goes down the river Ems near Gandersum on Saturday, June 20, 2009. (AP)

The body of a Florida grandfather was left to decompose on a cruise ship after he died of a heart attack onboard, according to a lawsuit.

Marilyn Jones, 78, set sail last August onboard the Celebrity Equinox from Fort Lauderdale with her husband of 55 years, Robert Jones, 79, according to the suit filed in the US District Court of Southern Florida.

Mr Jones died a couple of days into the cruise and his body was stored for nearly a week inside a walk-in beverage cooler rather than the morgue, the lawsuit states according to the Associated Press.

Court papers state that at the end of the cruise, the body was bloated and green and the family was unable to hold an open-coffin funeral, “which was a long-standing family custom and was what his family had desired.”

Marilyn Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren are seeking $1m in damages and say they suffered extreme emotional trauma.

The lawsuit alleges that the crew onboard the ship told Ms Jones that following the death of her husband his body could be taken off in Puerto Rico or kept in the morgue until they returned to Fort Lauderdale.

Because she was travelling alone she chose the ship’s morgue, which is not where the body ended up being stored, according to the claim.

Actions by the Celebrity crew caused the family “extreme trauma by visualizing Mr Jones’s body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity,” the suit states.

Celebrity Cruises told NBC News they would not comment on the case “out of respect for the family.”

Attorneys for Ms Jones and her family are seeking a jury trial.